One of my favorite moments of the film How to Train Your Dragon 2 occurs right after the hero Hiccup meets his mother. He is deep within a lush island nest surrounded by ice, and his mother takes him to the edge of a cliff, where, slumbering in the water, a giant dragon lies.
“The home of the great Bewilderbeast. The alpha species. One of the very few that still exist. Every nest has its queen, but this is the KING of all dragons. With his icy breath, this graceful giant built our nest, a safe haven for dragons everywhere. We all live under his care and his command.”
At that moment the gigantic dragon opens his eyes, turns and faces Hiccup. After a moment examining him, the Bewilderbeast gently puffs an icy breath onto Hiccup, engulfing him momentarily in a wave of frost; a gentle ribbing.
“He likes ye,” his mother laughs.
I firmly believe that the purpose of art and culture is to help us see hidden depths, facets and perspectives on the experience of life that we would never have found before. Stepping into this scene and examining its patterns helps illustrate an answer to one of the most frustrating paradoxes in existance:
The Paradox of God
Thousands of religions exist, each with their own view of God, some of which claim things about God that are completely antithetical to others. While I speak from a Mormon perspective, I sense that a great deal of what I have to say can apply to patterns found in almost all religious philosophies: the existance of good and evil, awe-inspiring love beyond all fathoming, the triumph of the love and the good over the evil. Feel free to apply these patterns as they may to your own belief system.
What I love and hate about the Mormon concept of God in particular is its paradoxical nature. On one hand, there are verses, such as this touching passage from the book of Moses, chapter 7, that reveal a Father of incredible beauty and love:
“And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?...
“...And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations; and thy curtains are stretched out still; and yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there; and also thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever;”
“....naught but peace, justice, and truth is the habitation of thy throne...How is it thou canst weep?”
The Lord's awe inspiring response is recorded thus:
“The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands...”
“And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood;
“And the fire of mine indignation is kindled against them; and in my hot displeasure will I send in the floods upon them, for my fierce anger is kindled against them....”
“But behold, their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers; Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom; and the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer1?”
In this story, the astonished Enoch watches as a loving and affectionate Father weeps over the judgments He must send upon a group who were more murderous and wicked than any other group that God had ever had amongst the breadth of His creation. He weeps for sadness that they shall suffer...this is not the God of the medieval ages, the judge itching to cast depraved humanity into the fiery pit of doom.
And yet, we espouse as scripture the ancient Bible, where God commanded the Israelites to do things such as kill all the inhabitants of the holy land, sparing none, not even children, a God who commanded Abraham to offer up his only, loved son Isaac, a God of inestimable power capable of great and terrible things, as expressed in this verse:
“O that he would show you that he can pierce you, and with one glance of his eye he can smite you to the dust!2“
God is wild and loving at heart
The experience with God mirrors what Hiccup must have felt as the giant Bewilderbeast awoke and gazed upon him. Here before him stood a giant dragon, its steps reverberating through the ice-nest like thunder, possessing the power to instantly destroy him. And yet, all the benevolent Bewilderbeast does is puff the slightest breath onto Hiccup, frosting his eyebrows; the equivalent of tousling his hair.
Earlier scenes in the movie depict dragon hunters whose ships and equipment have been destroyed and comrades slain by this powerful Bewilderbeast. It has power, and it knows it. Hiccup also knows that it has the power to do whatever it desires to do with him; he has witnessed that power. And yet all it does is tousle his hair...it likes him, his experienced mother says. It likes him. The giant Bewilderbeast...likes him.
It must have left him dazed. Confused. Awestruck. Inspired.
Bewildered.
God's goodness and love are inseparable from His power
I find an incredible insight into the nature of God by studying the roots of the English word danger. “Danger” means “liable to cause harm.” The word comes to us through the French word Dongier, which is itself derived from a string of words with their origination in the word Dominus, the Latin word for “lord” or “master.”
In other words, our word “danger” is directly derived from the latin name for God3.
Now, by “Danger,” I do not mean God is like an escaped murderer, a riptide just waiting to carry us out to sea, or a dictator; He is not dark. He is not ruled by shadows. He is not dangerous as in criminal, cruel or conniving; He is dangerous as in powerfully capable of fulfilling His own will, and that, at the destruction of anything and everything that stands in its way.
And His will is to love.
The idea of a loving God may seem incompatible with this God, the lion of Judah, the God of judgment described in the Old Testament. But this is not so: it is God's danger that makes His love efficacious.
The meaning of “power” is “effectiveness4.” In D&C 1:38 The Lord states “What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled...” God's power makes His word 100% effective.
The Lord of heaven loves us, but not just
The scriptures speak frequently of the deep love God possesses unto all mankind. He is kind to the ungrateful and evil. In His life on Earth, He associated with the vilest of sinners and outcasts. He invited all men to take upon themselves His burden; His yoke is easy, He declared, His burden is light, and His commandments are not grievous.
I had once heard at a fireside, that the Lord not just loves us, not just knows us personally, but that He likes us. Think of that, after what I have written above. This great and unfathomable Lord, on whose command the nest of this Earth and millions and millions and millions more like it have been strung in orbit around uncountable stars, all powered by His law and command. And yet He loves, knows and likes me, of all puny insignificant heaps of matter. It is His work and glory to bring to pass my immortality and eternal life5...this is His will, and His words and works serve to this end, not just for me peronally, but all now reading these words, all who have ever lived, who now live, or who ever will live.
The Paradox of God
The same paradox that laughed frost into Hiccup's face confronts us also, when we kneel to pray at night. We are kneeling before a Being that is dangerous, capable of smiting us into dust. And yet...He doesn't. Because He loves. He loves with the sensitivity and the gentleness of a perfect Father. We are made in His image and countenance and can come unto Him without fear, expecting His love and power, not to destroy, but to nurture, caress and cherish us into the beings we are capable of becoming. He is dangerous in His power to fulfil His word, and His word is that He loves.
May we ever allow the gaze of the great Bewilderbeast to fall on us without fear of it.
1) Moses 7:28, 30-34, 37
2) Jacob 2:15
3) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/danger#English
4) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/power
5) Moses 1:39
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